


-37ºC

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Genderswitch, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-10
Updated: 2009-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt has always hated winter and, right now, she's not particularly fond of Mello either. <br/>[AU, set soon after the ending of DN.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	-37ºC

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zeda](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Zeda).



> I love girl!Matt so very, very much, but I am still not sure I've done her justice in this story, eep. Anyway. For those of you who care, [Yakutsk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutsk) really is a city in Russia, and it really does get that insanely cold in February, which is when this fic is set. The Bratva na peeski are the Russian mafia, or, actually, the 'brotherhood', and the term applies to all gangs and whatnot. Or so my friend Ms. Wikipedia tells me, fff. This story was written with The Hush Sound playing obsessively, was Highly Influenced by very awesome conversations with my dear friend Zeda, and was furthermore kinda inspired by a [picture](http://blk-kitti.deviantart.com/art/Mello-x-girlMatt-Sleeping-117943799) she drew quite some time ago, which I haven't been able to get out of my head.
> 
> Anyways, this fic is dedicated to Zeda, because she is utterly, utterly, utterly awesome to me. ♥

Matt has always hated winter. She hates the cold weather, the sharps winds, the early morning frosts, and the way it makes her toes ache inside her socks. She hates the way her fingers cramp when she tries to pull the blankets higher around her, and the way she can't sleep, and, right now, she hates a certain Mihael Keehl. Which is why she's giving him her patented death glare from her side of the room. Even though he's asleep. And therefore can't see it. But she's counting on the fact that, at some subconscious level, his too-clever psyche will be able to sense the sheer _malevolence_ being poured mentally in his direction; she hopes it gives him nightmares, the bastard.

She'd said, right from the beginning, that they ought to have stayed in Cali. But no. Of course not. That would have been too simple. And, sure, yeah, she'd also said that she'd go wherever he wanted to go but... fucking Russia was not supposed to have even been in the restaurant, let alone on the menu. And in February, when the temperature gauge thinks nothing of minus numbers greater than her own age? And Yakutsk? An entire city built on freaking permafrost? God.

She supposes she should have seen it coming, though. It's not as if she doesn't know what's really going on here – the job is just an excuse, probably more for Mello's sake than her own, although it's true that the money's good. But this is Mello, now that he's a free man, trying to figure out his past; trying to put some kind of visual with the scant words typed out in black and white in the files she'd hacked for him so very, very long ago.

So she gets it. But it still pisses her off.

And this hotel is the biggest heap of shit she's ever seen.

Shivering with teeth-rattling violence, Matt glares at her watch in the dull light of the city, which is invading through the window, and decides that 3:14 AM is really much too early for her to be getting out of bed and, besides, past experience from the previous few days has already taught her that this poor impersonation of a hotel has something weird going on with the plumbing, and there won't be any hot water until 6:10 at the earliest. Because, clearly, a hot shower would be just too much to wish for.

Matt slides from the bed, skipping her feet – covered in red and black socks right up to her knees – across the cold floor as fast as she can. She drags Mello's heavy coat from where he'd flung it over the butt-ugly dresser, throws it over her bed-covers, and then scrambles back beneath the sheets. For a moment she just lays there, desperately trying to find the body warmth which ought to still be there from fifteen seconds earlier, but she can't, and oh man it's too cold. She flings herself back out of bed, angry and freezing, yanks his coat back up and shrugs herself into its depths, then stalks across the room, her toes stinging, and stares down at Mello. They've been in close quarters for so very long that she really shouldn't even have to hesitate – she's shared his toothbrush before, for God's sake – and it's not as if she hasn't slept with her back against his previously but, ugh, things have changed since Kira was defeated. Since they'd gotten tipsy in celebration with the SPK (Mello putting his antagonism towards Near on hold for one night because he felt the victory was his own too; Near watching them all over his tiny glass of something pale). Since Mello and herself had ended up in a corner together and—

Matt can hear the ticking of the gas heater in the corner, pipes rattling, and the slow slide of a car's tyres far down on the icy street below. She sucks at her bottom lip, wriggling her ankles to keep the blood moving. It's not as if that night actually matters, she lectures herself. Mello has never said anything, so he obviously doesn't even remember, but the problem is that she _does_, and sometimes she kind of wishes—

Well, and that's not important either. What is important is the fact that she's really bloody cold, and she's wearing a coat the size of Alaska, and it's not as though she's actually going to be touching him anyway. And so she mumbles to herself, pulls the covers of his bed back, crawls in, and presses her back up against his side. It would be better, she thinks, if his coat didn't smell so much of him – if _he_ didn't smell so much of him – all sweet milk chocolate and waxy car polish, the faint whiff of her own cigarettes, and something indefinably _male_. She can already feel the warmth radiating off of him, though, and so she gives up on trying to analyse what that scent does to her, and just snuggles backwards and closer. Mello has always functioned at a higher temperature than she has, which is why she can be rugged up in jeans and woollens while he's swanning around in thin leather and bare arms. And, right now, he's just so damn warm, and she can't help it, as she begins to drift back off to sleep, if she tucks her head in a little closer against the soft fur that lines the hood of his coat, breathes in deeply, and murmurs his name, as she slips away into dreaming.

At some point in her sleep Matt must have turned around because she wakes, a few hours later, to find herself, still wrapped in Mello's coat, but with her face pressed up against his chest. He's lying on his side watching her, and it really doesn't help matters that she wakes with his name on her lips, like an echo from when she'd conked out, and she's painfully aware of how it sounds, such a soft _Mello_, with too many syllables and a breathy little lilt. She's acutely aware, too, that she's left a damp patch on his t-shirt from having drooled on him; she rubs at her mouth, and stares up at him staring down at her.

“Was f'ckin' freezin'”, she explains, and the letters are still a little too much for her sleep-blurred voice. Mello's looking amused, the utter bastard, and she's half of a mind to give him a _piece_ of her mind, when her thoughts are abruptly interrupted by the realisation that there's a hand stroking her back, steady and rhythmic against the heaviness of the coat. She blinks at that, but finds herself relaxing into it anyway, her eyes fluttering to half-mast again as she lets her head rest back against his chest. “Warm now,” she mumbles.

It takes about ten minutes for her groggy brain to finally register that Mello, usually the king of smart arse repartee, is being worrying quiet.

Matt cracks her eyes open again, detaches her cheek from the damp patch on his chest, and peers back up at him. He's still watching her.

“I think,” she says, slowly, to try and keep track of her consonants this time, “that that's a bit creepy. D'nt stare, Mel.”

Mello's hand pauses against her back, just a fleeting falter in its up-down-curve routine, and then it's moving again, his arm somehow wrapping her in against him as it does. He raises his eyebrows. “Creepy?” he parrots back at her, as if she'd just suggested he get himself a desk job and take up wearing a tie on a daily basis. “_You're_ the one who decided to sleep with me, Matt. I think I'm allowed to look at the girl I'm sleeping with, wouldn't you say?

Matt can feel her face colouring slightly, and she hates on her genetics with a passion. Seeing as her genetics don't seem to give a shit, though, she turns her glare onto Mello. “M'not _sleeping with you_, dickhead. Is your own fault, anyway, this place is bloody ridiculous cold.” And she prods at his chest with her index finger to punctuate her irritation.

But Mello, the contrary git, isn't taking any of the bait she's offering him. He isn't pushing her out of the bed. He isn't arguing with her. He isn't teasing her. He isn't doing any of the things he ought to be doing; the things he ought to be doing because he's her best mate, her partner in crime, her favourite idiot. Instead he's looking at her like... like that. Matt doesn't want to lay around and learn just how many new knots her stomach can pull itself into beneath that gaze, and she can't understand what's gotten into him, and so she glares, with a bit more frustration, and starts to climb back out of the bed.

“Stay,” he says, instantly. A touch of colour rises at his own neck, then, and, when Matt stares at him, he adds quickly, “The hot water won't be on yet, anyway. You'll freeze your little arse off if you get out of bed now.”

“Mello...” she says warningly.

Mello just rolls his eyes at her in an exaggerated way, and tucks himself deeper amongst the blankets, his hand on her back pulling her down with him. Matt nips at her bottom lip almost sullenly; to tell the truth, she doesn't really _want_ to move, because his hand on her is almost embarrassingly nice, even through the coat. When Mello realises that she's not about to flee from him, he shifts around until he's on face-level with her, all tangled blond hair and too-warm, slightly dry breath. Matt just looks at him. Mello grins, apparently suddenly certain that she's neither going to escape nor belt him around the head, and then his other hand appears from nowhere and drags the coat's zipper down. The noise is absurdly loud in the quiet of the room, almost grating in Matt's ears. Still she doesn't move – she's not entirely certain she can breathe, how the hell is she supposed to be able to _move_? – and Mello obviously takes that as tacit permission (which she supposes it is, actually), because he slides his hand smoothly upwards beneath all her various layers of shirts/jumpers/singlets, and presses his palm against her bare belly.

“See?” he says softly. “You're warm.”

And she _is_ warm, and it's nice, and she wants him to back the hell off, and she wants his other hand against her too, and either way he's still warmer than she is, and it's not as though he's doing anything apart from hold it there, and it's not as though it means anything, and it's not as though she wishes it did. She can feel his index finger marking little lines against her, as if he were spelling something out. She doesn't even realise she's closed her eyes until his other hand leaves her back, and he brushes his thumb against her lashes.

“I can keep you warm, Mattie,” he says, and she wants to throttle him because that's just so _lame_, but on the other hand there's not a word she can say about it, not a single smart arse retort, because at his words – bloody lame or not – her whole body trembles, and she knows that he can feel it. She opens her eyes and she can see it there on his face, see that he'd felt it through his hand, outstretched on her stomach. That same hand presses even closer in response, index finger now making lazy circles around her bellybutton, leaving tingling goosebumps in its wake.

“Mello,” she says. “I thought you – I thought we—”

His face is much too close. He's risen up a little way and is hovering over her. She can smell his hair against his skin, almost taste the scent of the girly shampoo he uses. He's brushing his fingers against her forehead, as if she were a child with a fever, except that that metaphor doesn't work very well, corrupted, as it is, by the fact that his eyes are looking at her as if she were anything but a child. As if he's only just noticed. “Kira's gone,” he says. “We're free now. That's what you keep telling me, right? We can do what we want, go where we want. Nobody is trying to kill us, well, I mean, not many people, anyway. There's no reason anymore not to...”

Matt reaches down, yanks Mello's hand away from her stomach, and shoves at him fiercely. “_No reason not to_ isn't good enough a reason _to_, Mello,” she snaps, suddenly genuinely angry. “_No reason not to_ isn't good enough a reason to fuck it all up over... having a quick fuck. If you're horny, go and deal with it in the bathroom, it's not like I haven't heard you doing that before. But I care about us too much to let you just—”

She's sitting up, blankets caught crookedly on the coat, furious. She's about to fling her legs sideways and leave, when Mello sits up too, and makes a grab for her wrists – he knows her well enough to sense when she's likely to hit him. They've given each other enough petulant bruises over the years for him to be able to see it a mile off.

“Matt,” he says. The tone he uses makes her insides ache.

She almost kicks her foot upwards and out, to get him in the balls. She almost falls off the bed just to make him fall too, and maybe he'd land on his stupid frigging head.

She almost leans in and kisses him.

What she _does_ do is bite down hard on her bottom lip, and then jerks her wrists free of his grasp with such vehemence that it makes her elbows hurt. “You can't just go and change the ground rules,” she reminds him. She's already been away from the shelter of the blankets too long, though, and a shudder of cold wracks through her, effectively stealing all of her bite's bark.

Mello's gazes goes almost instantly from annoyed to apologetic, and he changes tactics again, grabbing at her waist with both of his hands and dragging her back down beneath the blankets. He burrows them in deeply, and pulls the doona up around her head so that she's cocooned in there with him, his breath back on her face, and his arms now somehow wrapped around her tightly. “You were getting cold,” he explains calmly, as if she's not busy kicking his shins, and then he closes his eyes, and acts as if the entire argument had never happened; acts as if he can just fall back to sleep holding her and...

“Mello,” she snaps again. She doesn't pull away from him, though, and she stops kicking, too – the warmth of him against her has made her painfully aware of just how cold she had become in that tiny time away from the blankets. She makes a mental note to tell their contact just how shitty this place really is, and maybe even express her fine opinion of the _Bratva na peeski_ if this is the best they can do for their international guests.

Mello cracks open one eye, then the other, sighs like a drama queen, and simply pulls her in a little closer. He tugs at the open sides of the coat, so that they cover him too, and so that her belly is pressed flush against his thigh.

“I'm not the one who changed the ground rules, you know,” he says.

Matt growls. “I already said, it's not like I'm _sleeping_-sleeping with—”

Mello shakes his head. “Don't be stupid, I don't mean that. I mean at Near's. With the SPK. When we were drinking. You were the one who kissed me, you know.”

Matt's lungs forget what their purpose in life is. “You can remember that?” she hiss-whispers, unsure whether she's delighted or furious, and either way all her blood has migrated to her head. “You can remember that and you... you never said anything?”

He gives her a look. “Of course I remember. How the hell do you think I could forget that? Forget _you_? We'd never – I'd never – but then you – and it was— And anyway, I'm saying something now, aren't I? I just kept waiting for you to...” He trails off, and turns his head, studying the way the dull light is pooled against their sheets, as if it were the most interesting thing on the planet. His hands, though, move with a certain confidence against her hips.

Matt attempts to collect her thoughts. Mello's words are like chaos in her head but his hands, pressing against her, feel like an anchor in contrast, and maybe that realisation confuses her even more than his words do.

“My memory's hazy...” she says, softly, after a long and lurching moment.

Mello grunts, then hesitates. He smiles slowly, giving up his study of the light in favour of gazing at her searchingly. “Are you... are you trying to play _coy_, Mail Jeevas?”

Matt shoves him roughly again, but she's grinning despite herself. Mello laughs from where she's pushed him to, at the edge of the bed, the light spilling all the better across his face, and his eyes bright. He reaches out and pulls her close again, so that now she's lying where the sheets are warm from him. He leans his head in towards her and practically purrs, “I could give you a refresher.”

“A... what?”

“A reminder. For your memory. Of what it was like. To kiss me.”

Matt isn't entirely sure she wants to do this. Go down this path. Move in this direction.

On the other hand, she isn't entirely sure that this isn't what she's been waiting for, just beneath the surface of her skin, for a very, very long time now.

She licks at her lips, almost nervously, and whispers, “But I was the one who kissed you, so...”

Mello grins, and his hand tightens at her hip. “You really _do_ remember,” he says, and she marvels, because that's what she's been wanting to say, and she's about to murmur something along those lines, when he's a dick enough to ruin it by trailing his other hand just a little too far up her side, brushing it against her breast.

Okay. So maybe _ruin it_ is too strong a phrase. Especially given the way that she shivers in response. But still. She frowns a little, and shifts slightly, making his hand drop back to her ribs.

“Of course I remember,” she says, as he somehow manages to smirk and pout all at the same time, creeping his hand up automatically higher again. “I... I don't just kiss anyone, Mel,” she adds.

Mello takes about point three seconds to process that, and slides his hand instantly back down to her waist, as though he's just made a startling discovery and doesn't want to make her feel awkward as a consequence. His eyes are still teasing, though, when he drags his tongue across his own lips and says, “So kiss me then. If I was worth kissing the once...”

The light is all across his face now – across her own, too, she supposes, but her _own_ doesn't interest her – such crooked curves of bright and brighter, cast by the night time city beyond. Matt can't quite stop shivering, and she doesn't think it's the temperature anymore. She's trying to remember where she put her common-sense, but it appears to have gotten lost somewhere amongst the cold and the sheets and Mello's steady fingers. She's trying to lecture herself sternly on the small fact that, well, a moment ago she'd been ready to punch him just because he'd offered her up one small line of lame sweet-talk, but that fact doesn't seem to have lodged anywhere vital enough, because somehow she's leaning up awkwardly, and somehow she's pressing her mouth against his.

Mello is warm, and his lips are soft and firm all at once, and that wandering hand of his is stroking up and down her side, as though he wants to calm her, and he's mouthing something against her lips, and all the while she's desperately trying to work out what the hell she's supposed to do next. Kissing had been a whole lot simpler when she'd been tipsy and, right now, all she can think is that she honestly has no idea what she's doing.

Mello kisses at her bottom lip and then pulls back a little. He places his thumb over her mouth, dipping it downwards, and drawing a swirl on her chin. “How many people have you kissed before?” he asks, curiously but calmly, as if he were discussing the weather, or the state of the international economy.

Matt's genetics fail her yet again and she can feel herself turning an annoying shade of red. She kind of wants to hide deeper under the blankets; she glares rather half-heartedly at him instead. “None of your business.”

But Mello already knows, she can see it on his face, and she has no idea why she's even trying to pretend otherwise. She waits for him to say something teasing, but he doesn't. He just lays there, very still for a moment, then curves his hand tighter at her back, brushing her belly in closer against him. He uses his other hand to push her tangled hair from her eyes, and then stroke a line down the length of her face.

“Only me?” he says. “I'm the only one?”

For some reason that doesn't sound mocking at all but rather... Matt can't put her finger on it. She almost wants to use the word _awed_, but how is that even possible? So she lets a blank spot rest in her mind where the adjective should fall, and just purses her lips, because she doesn't want to speak the truth, but she knows she can't lie to him either. She never could lie to him at the best of times, but it would be downright impossible with him looking at her like that, with his hand rubbing so comfortably at her back, with...

“Yes,” she says, in a low, slightly bothered voice, as if she's somehow admitting a whole lot more than just her kissing history. “Only you.”

Mello traces her lips with his finger again, and Matt wishes she could read that mind of his.

“Well,” he says, drawing that same line across her bottom lip that he'd drawn earlier. “Well.”

And he's definitely sounding awed now, there's no way around it, and this time he's the one who's kissing her, his mouth slower, steadier against her lips. Matt shuts down her brain and relaxes beneath the caress of his mouth on hers, of his hand on the curve of her stomach. When he brushes her lips with his tongue she opens them for him, even though part of her isn't sure she wants to, simply because another part of her really does, and it's weird, his tongue, there, in her mouth, and she still has no idea what she's doing. She still has no idea what she's doing, but it doesn't matter now, somehow, because Mello _does_, and he doesn't seem to think it's stupid, and he's not laughing at her, and his hands are so secure against her body. He butterflys a chaste kiss against her lips, before he pulls away; again, he mouths little words that she isn't brave enough yet to try and decipher.

She feels like she's turning into warm wax beneath his touch.

“Why?” he asks eventually, trailing his kisses away from her mouth and along her neck, dotting a little line of them down to where the furry hood of the coat is bunched up against her shoulder.

“Because,” she says, and doesn't trust herself to elaborate.

Somewhat surprisingly, Mello simply nods at that. Maybe the answer actually makes sense to him, maybe he knows her well enough to be certain that that's all he's going to get out of her right now anyway, or _maybe_ he just doesn't want to argue again, in case she decides to do something about the fact that his hand has finally risen from her bellybutton again, and is stroking further and further north, his skin slightly rough against her softness.

“Mello...” she says, as his kiss on her collarbone – layers of clothes tugged down by his fingers to leave it bare, his lips damp against freckles – turns into gentle sucking; as his palm makes a curve over one of her breasts, almost nestingly, and rubs and presses. “Mello,” she says again, the final syllable coming out slightly wonky, as he thumbs at her nipple.

Mello's hand grows temporarily still against her, and he stops mouthing her neck and looks up. There are so many things written on his face, gleaming in his eyes, and she's not entirely sure she's actually ready to see them. She mulls over the myriad of things she could say to him now, though, now that she has his attention – like asking him to please back off again – or even asking him to please hurry up and get her naked. In the end, though, there's really only one thing she actually can say, can actually _live_ with saying, and so she bites it out, sheepish. “I've never... done it before.”

Mello's mouth crooks into a smile, and his hand goes back to massaging her breast, making her skin heat through and tingle in a prickly kind of way. He pushes at her teasingly with his hip, and chuckles. “I sort of guessed that, Matt. I mean, if I'm the only person you've kissed then, logically, chances are...”

She feels a bit stupid.

He kisses at the blush spreading over her cheeks, before leaning down to kiss her breasts, through all the layers, and then pulls his hands back out from beneath her clothes, and wraps them around her instead. “I'm not an idiot, Matt,” he says, then pauses. “I know... I know what a good thing you are. I can wait for this. Us.”

Matt falters in her thoughts. She reaches out, and presses her hand against his chest, and admits slowly, perhaps more to herself than even to him, “I do want it. I just...”

“Just not this morning.” Mello grins at her.

Her answering smile is a thousand _thank yous_, and she buries her hand tighter against his shirt, and kisses him again, tentatively swiping her tongue inwards and against his. It's as though everything makes sense again, because she knows now, knows that he's still going to be Mello, her best mate, her partner in crime, her favourite idiot, even if he's had his hand on her boobs and his tongue in her mouth and – and God, he's so beautiful in the dull city light. She wonders why they never did this before, and then thinks maybe it's because they never would have gotten anything else done. She can feel his heart beating beneath her grasp on his t-shirt.

“You can...” she hesitates. “You can keep feeling me up, if you want,” she finishes, with a grin, and upwards glance.

To her surprise, Mello shakes his head in a rueful kind of way.

Matt tilts her own head back and stares at him. “Huh?”

He laughs, pulling her in against him for what seems like the dozenth time, but now he lifts her hips as he does so, turning his own body and pulling her down a ways so that the naked skin of her belly presses in against his hip like before, but then shifting a bit so that she can feel—

“_Oh_,” she says, breathing it out in a small, surprised sound.

“Yes, _oh_,” Mello concurs with an amused expression. “And I kind of think it's too damn cold out to take that trip to the bathroom you so sweetly suggested earlier, so it might be better if I kept my hands to myself, unless, of course, you'd like to...?” His grin is more than a little wicked.

Matt can't help but grin herself, at the heady knowledge that he's like _that_, hard like that, because of her. And there is admittedly a part of her which would like to – maybe – perhaps just touching, not actually – but the rest of her knows that there's no rush, and if he's saying that he's okay with waiting, then she really wants to wait. She wants to enjoy the realisation that she _can_, just for a little while. It's like her whole world has been tipped on its side and it struggling to stand up again, but not in a bad way. It's like an appetiser.

“Cuddling?” she asks.

Mello nods at that, and wraps his arms around her. And maybe they doze off to sleep again, but that doesn't matter, because they have all the time in the world, and they're young, and they're free, and nobody (much) is trying to kill them, and there's still a while before the sun will actually rise. And, Matt thinks, as she settles back against Mello's shoulder to snooze and snuffle and dribble spit, if it looks like they're going to run out of hot water because they slept late, then there's always a chance they could share. Maybe.

Or she'll just make him go without.

Either way, his hands feel really nice.

And she's not going anywhere any time soon.


End file.
